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Monday, June 19, 2017

Will GMO Mustard Be On Your Table?

The beauty of local food for body and appreciation is everywhere in richly colored flowers and ripening fruits! Each year greater numbers of people, young and old take to growing some of their own food with most throwing in a few flowers. They may grow in deep raised beds or in pots hight up on a second story balcony. Not only gardens but chickens. More and more when walking through neighborhoods you can expect to hear the soft clucking of hens or get glimpses of the small, uniquely designed chicken houses. Speaking of birds, Bloomington is now designated as a Bird City!

Summer definitely arrived early in Indiana. Many June plants are in resplendant glory, while others have already exited the scene, chickory is beginning a season of full on bloom, perrenial Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa, joins the color show with its dynamic orange! The early heat and many heavy storms has been a challenge to plants and local growers. One good thing thus far is that farmers have already had one early harvest of their hay fields.

So why the title? Read on.

“Monsanto and Bayer, Dow and Dupont, and Syngenta and
ChemChina. They control more than 65 per cent of global pesticide sales.
Serious conflicts of interest issues arise, as they also control almost 61 per
cent of commercial seed sales.”

Say no to GM mustard

There are formidable social, economic and environmental reasons why it
should not be cultivated

The manner in which the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC)
recently cleared the proposal for genetically modified (GM) mustard is
extraordinary to say the least. It makes a mockery of the commitment in the
Bharatiya Janata Party manifesto that “GM foods will not be allowed without
full scientific evaluation on the long term effects on soil, production and
biological impact on consumers”. The Prime Minister had delighted consumers by
lending his weight to the promotion of organic food. On the other hand, GM and
organic are completely incompatible.
The alluring promises of higher yield and lower pesticide usage which
induced many, including myself as Textile Secretary to the Government of India
in the 1990s, to welcome Bt cotton have now been belied. Despite increased
fertilisers and irrigation, the expectations of enhanced cotton yield have not
been realised. Most of the countries that have higher cotton yields than India
do not grow GM cotton. The package of promises sold to us did not reveal all of
this. If I had an inkling of the future at that time, Bt cotton would not have
been introduced in India.

Yields as a touchstone

We would now be foolish in accepting the yield promises of the GM variety of
mustard, a crop which is an integral part of every Indian’s food. Ab initio
the yield claims on which GM mustard has been cleared are not even remotely
reliable — being based on comparisons with 30-year-old cultivars, and not on
more recent high-yielding hybrids. The highest yields in mustard are from the
five countries which do not grow GM mustard — U.K.,
France, Poland,
Germany and Czech
Republic — and not from the GM-growing U.S.
or Canada (see
graph based on FAO data). If India
is desirous to increase its mustard yield rapidly and safely, this can be done
by adopting the practice of System of Mustard Intensification, for which
successful trials have been done in Bihar through a
World Bank project. Results showed higher yields and better income. All this
without the spraying of any toxic herbicides, which is the undisclosed story of
GM mustard.
GM mustard’s yield increase claims have been successfully challenged now,
prompting the crop developers and regulators to retract on that front — it is
another matter that many reports continue to claim that GM mustard will
increase yields.

Gaps in evaluation

There have been numerous severe deficiencies in the evaluation process of GM
mustard. The risks to health, environment and agriculture have not been
evaluated even through those inadequate tests which were conducted at the time
of Bt brinjal examination, though mustard is far more extensively grown and
consumed than brinjal.
HT (herbicide tolerant) GM crops have been condemned by a number of medical
professionals and other scientists for increasing chemical herbicide use,
leading to serious health conditions — at all stages, but most worryingly at
the foetal stage. A scientific report from Argentina
found a fourfold increase in birth defects and a threefold increase in
childhood cancers in HT soya areas. Shockingly, the GEAC has conveniently
omitted to have any herbicide-related studies. A small committee was
constituted to “examine” the safety dossier — the tests that were done and the
deliberations of GEAC were shrouded in secrecy. After a scathing order from the
Central Information Commission, the GEAC made a sham of public consultations,
through an opaque and perfunctory eyewash process.

The U.S. is
a prime example of a country which has galloped into the GM mode of
agriculture. Studies have shown a strong correlation between growth of GM
crops, the herbicides they promote, and diseases such as acute kidney injury,
diabetes, autism, Alzheimer’s and cancers in the past 20 years in the U.S.
Seventeen of the 20 most developed countries — including Japan, Russia, Israel
and most of Europe — refuse to grow GM crops. An unacceptable marketing trick,
that of promotion of a “swadeshi” GM, is being used to break down resistance to
GM crops in India’s vast market, ignoring that safety concerns are the same —
swadeshi GM or not.

Losses and pernicious effects

The GEAC had itself rejected a similar HT GM mustard proposal by Bayer in
2002. The same reasons apply now. A herbicide-tolerant crop promotes constant
exposure to a single herbicide — which eventually results in weeds becoming
resistant. Over 20 species of weeds in the U.S.
are now resistant to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide. As desperate
farmers tried to control these “superweeds”, there was a tenfold increase in
use of glyphosate in 16 years.